The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) (43 page)

“
Go.”

Chapter 27
:
The Hippodrome

Javor felt on edge without his dagger under his clothes. Even the amulet was upset, trembling on and off all day long. The other novices and monks noticed Javor was out of sorts. “Weirder than ever,” he heard behind him, repeatedly.

Flaccus surprised Javor and the rest of their little gang. After breakfast and clean-up chores were finished,  he led them to the side gate behind the stables, checking around corners for watchful monks. When the way was clear, they slipped out the gate, wincing as it squeaked, and ran as silently as they could down the narrow alley. They barely dared to breathe until the Abbey was out of sight. They were on a relatively wide street with just a few people. A very short, bald man in a green cloak stood on the corner.

“
Where are we going, Flaccus?” Sandulf asked.

“
To the Hippodrome!” Flaccus announced.

“
What’s a hippodrome?” Javor asked.

“
Where the horses race!” answered Sandulf.

“
The Emperor has proclaimed races to celebrate Priscus’ victory over the barbarians,” Flaccus explained.

“
That was two months ago!” Javor protested. He did not feel like celebrating anything, but the others were anxious to get out of the Abbey again.

“
We’re going to watch the horse races!” Ammon shouted, a wide grin splitting his long face.

Flaccus led them through narrow streets and alleys to a broad avenue crowded with horses, carriages, chariots and pedestrians, all streaming southward into the slanting sunlight. The buildings here were bigger, grander and more beautiful than any Javor had yet seen in the capital of the Roman Empire: huge colonnades, gilded and painted statues, frescoes and mosaics along the walls. The road had been swept clean. Javor could see workers sweeping up after the horses, scrubbing the cobblestones.

Ahead, a huge wall rose at the end of the street. He realized he was at the Milion, the square white stone that marked the beginning of the first mile of the Roman Empire. And behind it, the biggest building that he had ever seen: grey stone walls that rose higher and higher over his head, as big, he thought, as a mountain.

“
That’s the stadium of the hippodrome,” said Flaccus. “It was built by the Emperor Constantine the Great, and it’s said that a hundred thousand can find a seat inside.”

Javor was speechless. In front of the building were four enormous horses made of shining gold. Behind them was a huge wood and iron gate, guarded by legionnaires in gleaming armour, brilliant red capes and peacock-erect helmets. Between them, the crowd lined up patiently outside the great Hippodrome of Constantine.

Javor had never imagined anything so enormous. Passing through the gate, he was atop a wall more than twice his own height, a wall that stretched out so far that before it curved back, it was only a blur. Its face was covered with bronze, some of it turning green, but all worked into images of monsters and gods, battles and animals, goddesses and demons.

Rising above the wall were rows of benches, tier upon tier so high they made him dizzy until the topmost was lost in the sky. The benches were filling with men of all ages and sizes, from children to seniors, dressed in fine robes and tattered rags. Many had green ribbons tied around their arms, or triangular green scarves around their necks. In another section, he could see a great field of blue.

“
Wait—why are there no women here?” he asked.

“
Women don’t come to games!” Ammon said, shocked that Javor would even ask.

The noise level was nearly deafening: thousands of men talking, shouting, calling one another, insulting their rivals. One section of spectators, all with blue ribbons on their shoulders, were chanting something Javor couldn’t quite understand, but clearly insulting another group in another section who wore green scarves. The greens were shouting something back.

The area enclosed by the stadium was an expanse of sand. In the centre, so distant that he could barely see any details, rose a white twisting column. Two other tall columns tapered to points. “Those are obelisks that the Emperor brought from other lands he conquered—back in the old days,” Flaccus explained.

At each end of the sandy area stood a gargantuan statue of a bearded man. The shin on the nearer statue was as tall as Javor himself. Muscular and heroic, he carried a club and looked confidently out over the crowded stadium. “That’s Herakles,” said Flaccus. The name sounded faintly familiar to Javor from some of Photius’ stories. The sudden memory of the old warrior brought surprising tears to Javor’s eyes.

He blinked, taking in other colossal statues: one showed a woman holding a life-size horse and rider in her hand; across the sand was an immense eagle, wings spread; there were several circular holes drilled in the wings. He wanted to ask about them, but Flaccus was already busy showing off his knowledge of the Hippodrome. “See that twisting column? That’s the Serpentine Column. Constantine the Great had it brought from Delphi. And that’s Romulus and Remus with their wolf-mother, and there’s the Obelisk of Thutmosis—he was Pharaoh of Egypt until the Emperor Constantine the Great conquered Egypt—”

“
I thought Egypt was conquered by Augustus Caesar,” Sandulf protested.

“
Oh, so now you’re an expert on the Hippodrome, Sandulf,” Flaccus said cuttingly.

“
No, but…”

“
And do you see that statue of the charioteer and his team of horses?” Flaccus went on. “Over there, almost in the exact middle: that’s Porphyrios, the greatest chariot-racer ever. It’s said that he never lost a race, and retired undefeated.”

For the first time, Javor began to appreciate the sheer wealth of the Roman Empire, concentrated in its capital city. Gilded statues, blinding in the sunlight; tapestries fluttering in the breeze, showing triumphs of the Legions; the thousands upon thousands of men all around him, dressed in their finest clothes and jewelry, sitting in relative comfort in a building bigger by more than twenty-fold than the entire village he had known most of his life, all for the purpose of … sport.

Games. Diversions. Nothing to do with producing food for the inhabitants of the big city, or to protect them against raiders.

He sat down on a wooden bench, which was bolted to concrete steps that ran right around the length of the stadium, allowing each row to see above the heads of the row in front of them.
Great idea,
Javor thought.

Flaccus continued to guide his friends around the Hippodrome from his seat. “And over there,” he pointed to the far left side of the stadium, which was covered by a vast purple awning, “is the Kathisma, where the Imperial Family sits to watch the races or games or whatever’s going on. It’s connected by a special passage directly to the Imperial Palace, which is right behind the wall, there. Maybe the Emperor himself will come to watch the races today!”

Javor couldn’t clearly see the far end of the stadium, and even the Emperor’s lodge, the Kathisma, was a  blur. Closer in, the Blues and the Greens were still chanting insults at each other; men carried trays, calling out that they were selling food or little flasks of wine or beer.

“
Can we get something to drink, Flaccus?” he asked.

“
Too expensive, here. We’ll all have something after the races. Be patient, Javor!”

Trumpets near the Kathisma brayed across the stadium and the crowd cheered, raising the noise level to something nearly unbearable—Javor had never experienced so much noise in his life.

“
It’s the Emperor Maurice and Empress Leontia!” Flaccus gushed.

“
How can you tell from so far away?” asked Ammon.

“
No one else can wear purple!”

Ammon, Javor and Sandulf squinted into the distance to see figures walk to seats at the edge of the wall that circled the hippodrome. A man in long purple robes with something golden on his head—Javor couldn’t tell what it was from that distance—waved at the crowd, which cheered in response. 

Another blare from the trumpets, and along the wall a wide gate swung open. A procession of mounted soldiers marched toward the Emperor. The
cataphracts
were all dressed in golden armour that shone bright in the sunlight. The horse-tail plumed helmets rippled in the breeze almost as one, and their bright red capes flowed behind them like a blood-stained river. Each one carried a spear, held rigidly upright, and their tips glinted as the horses marched past the Emperor’s lodge. Even the horses were armoured, wearing blankets covered in polished steel scales that reflected the sunlight blindingly into the audience’s eyes.

The company strutted the length of the Hippodrome toward the Emperor’s lodge, and paused. Behind them came a company of foot soldiers, not as imposing but just as grand as the cataphracts, bearing long, decorated shields and long spears, marching in perfect formation and time with the trumpets. With a final stomp, they halted behind the horses.

The leader of the cavalry saluted the Emperor and shouted out a speech in Latin. “He’s praising the Emperor and his wisdom, and thanking him for the opportunity to win glory for Rome in battles against the barbarians,” Flaccus explained, showing off his command of Latin as well as Greek. “They’ve just returned from a successful campaign in Moesia, where they slaughtered barbarians.” Javor involuntarily shuddered at the thought of villages like his own being overrun by those beautiful, gleaming and proud soldiers.

The company paraded around the stadium, showing the whole crowd the gleaming strength of their armour, the shining ferocity of their weapons. The crowd cheered.

Finally, it was time for the races. The trumpets blared again and from another gate came four chariots pulled by teams of four horses. The cheering and chanting of the crowd rose past deafening. Javor thought the noise would drive him insane. Behind each chariot was a team of men in matching tunics: blue, red, white, green. The horses’ headdresses and other decorations matched the men.

The chariot drivers were resplendent in long, flowing robes of many colours—the colour of their teams, red, blue, green or white. They all wore fantastically decorated helmets and gaudy wristbands; one had several heavy gold necklaces. The teams strutted slowly past the Emperor, saluting with their right arms raised shoulder-high, straight out. The trumpets played a final braying note, and the chariots lined up on the sandy track. The drivers removed their decorative helmets and replaced them with smaller, more practical ones; their men bustled about, removing the horses’ decorations.

A man announced the names of the racers, with long descriptions of their history, where they were born, the families they came from, the races they had won in the past and the names of their horses, but Javor heard almost none of it over all the cheering, chanting and booing. The people with blue scarves or kerchiefs cheered for the blue team, the green-wearing crowds for the green team and so on, and each booed the other teams as loudly as they could. The drivers played to the crowd, raising their arms and bowing, or making what even Javor understood as very rude gestures to various sections of the stadium.

“
Ten on the red!” someone in the row below Javor said.
What does that mean?
But before he could ask Flaccus, the trumpets blew another note and the drivers gripped their reins firmly. Their men scrambled out of the way and the horses scraped their hooves on the sand, tossing their heads. The chariots moved forward and back as the announcer shouted “Ready! On the line! Teams in check! Annnnd … GO!”

The crowds screamed like insane demons as the horses leaped forward, jerking their drivers forward and back; some of the chariots even came off the ground a little, and then they were thundering along the sandy track along the wall. Dust rose behind them, and Javor was certain they would all collide with the wall. But after what he thought was the last possible second, they turned and continued around the inside edge of the stadium. The green chariot pulled ahead of the others, the red close behind.

“
Twenty on the green!” screamed someone in the stands. “You got it! And ten on the white to place!” someone else answered. Spectators screamed incoherently as the chariots reached the far end of the stadium and turned precariously again. People stood up to see better, forcing Javor and his friends to copy them. The blue chariot didn’t make it: one wheel rose off the ground as the horses pulled it around the corner. It tipped on its side, pulling the horses down into a pile of tangled legs and reins. A loud groan came from sections all around the stadium and Javor saw a man weeping.